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Tuesday, November 20, 2012

In
Israel today, there are two wars going on, and each one has its own goals,
tactics and results, and it is conceivable that the tactics of one may act
against the other's interest.

I
explain: war A is the physical one. It's cause is incessant rocket fire and
other cross-border violence perpetrated against Israel. War B is the PR one -
an abstraction of sorts - it is less "real" than the rockets but also
important, since in our geo-political reality, it matters what other nations
think. Let us look at each one in isolation, and then examine their convergence
in the real world.

The
physical war:
Essentially, this goes back to the partition plan and the Arab refusal to
recognize Israel's right to exist. The historical justification to our
establishment in the Middle East is attacked by Negationist history - cynically
and purposefully revised against historical evidence - to deny the facts. This
battle is fought in many spheres, from the audacious denial of Holocaust to the
philistine destruction and removal of artifacts attesting to 3,000 year old
Jewish presence on the Temple Mount. While the PLO switched tactics in the
'70's, and instead of announcing its plans to liberate all of Israel, discussed
peace and a Palestinian State in pre-1967 borders, they never changed their
open and honest plans described in their Arabic speeches - talking of the
destruction of the State of Israel. What this all leaves Israel with is a
hostile de-facto city-state on its southern frontier which is dedicated, not to
statehood, but to the destruction of Israel. If we step back for a moment to a
decisive (though ill-conceived, from the viewpoint of Israel's security) point
in history - the Disengagement from the Gaza Strip, this all becomes quite
clear. Israel took away any logical or defensible reason for the Gazans to
assault Israel: their stated goal of "liberating Gaza from the oppressive
occupation" (or as a friend calls it, the neo-colonialist argument), and yet
still Gaza chose to ignore the well-being of their population and the building of
their society, and rather used their new-found independence to attack Israel, now from up close - using the newly destroyed Jewish towns in the northern part of the strip as a base. At this critical point, there was no more rationale for attacks on
Israel, unless one is willing to take the Gazans at their word: their purpose
is not to liberate Gaza or the West Bank or even Jerusalem, but to destroy
Israel.

Now,
Israel is in a situation where their ability to fight back is hampered: they
have left the alleyways that were otherwise supervised by the IDF, to the
terrorists. Hamas controls a clandestine flow of materiel and explosives and
uses them to fight Israel. And here we have another element, that of euphemism
and newspeak or double-think - for when we say "fight Israel", we do
not mean what most countries do - nor what most countries consider valid war.
We mean attacking primarily civilians - the killing of civilians to sow terror
- a war crime by the Geneva Convention. And yet, the world glosses over this
unimportant point - and considers this a war. (The Geneva Convention and war
crimes are only trotted out when Israel apologizes for inadvertent civilian
casualties.)

And
so, Israel must fight back. It is its most basic requirement, above and beyond any
rhetoric, for a government to protect the security of its citizens. If a
government that taxes citizens without representation was seen as
self-evidently deserving of rebellion, how much more so if a government was to
abdicate its responsibility to security? The response is far from excessive -
and again we fall into the pitfall of double-think (by suggesting the concept
we make it a real consideration): since when is any army
concerned with proportionality when it is fighting a war? The objective of war
is to win; in this case, to bring security to Israel's civilian population. The
objective is not to do so while only using proportional methods! Heaven forbid
if Hamas were to ever possess the capacity to be "excessive" to
Israel – does one think anyone would call on Hamas to behave
"proportionally"? Does one think Hamas would listen? Were any of the
5 7-army wars of annihilation fought against Israel since its inception
proportional- masses of troops in the millions against
a nation with less than 600,000 soldiers?

Beyond
this, the world forgets that Israel is not fighting a recognized country.
(Again, it is fascinating how, as Whorfianism claims, language employed defines
the categories through which we think - by calling them militants instead of terrorists
we lose part of the foundation of our justification to fight them.) The only
thing internationally recognized about the Hamas government is that its status
as a terror organization. When a terrorist admit publicly in Arabic that its
purpose is to destroy you, you don't act with proportion, you destroy them. The
fact that they hide amongst civilians and therefore bring upon their population
death is their fault, not Israel's. It would be a false
morality indeed (not to mention against the ethics of the Torah) for Israel to
place a higher premium upon Gazan civilian life than its own citizens'.

From
all this, it is clear that from the physical war's perspective, we must go
all-out. Israel has a moral responsibility to its citizens to protect them, and
not one of their lives can be sacrificed for the PR war, to which we will now
turn our attention.

The
PR war:
From this perspective, each side ignores the truth value and validity of the
historical, social and religious nature of the conflict, and tries to impress
with sound bites, pictures and video. And here is where "world
opinion" holds such sway, for the primary purpose of the PR war is to turn
international sympathy to one side or the other. And we must recognize that
international sympathy is rooted in western liberal ideology. The problem with
this ideology is that it accepts no ethical absolutes, and dogmatically avoids
passing judgment upon the relative morality of one side versus the other.
Essentially, since WWII, the liberal ideology has hinged upon the proposition
that "the underdog is always the victim, and always to be helped".
The amoral idea caused liberals to be supportive of Jews as they limped out of
the gas chambers. The world saw David as caught between two Goliaths, one being
Hitler, the other, a numerically overwhelming Arab world seething with
blood-lust for the remnant of Israel. However, as soon as Israel demonstrated
an ability to protect themselves and provide themselves, thank God, with security,
by the sword if necessary, the Arab world shifted the focus from tiny Israel in
a sea of Arab hate, to expansive Israel bullying small and weak Gaza. The world
was happy to allow David to [I just had to take a break and run to our safe
room, we had a siren with multiple booms following] become Goliath, it simply
shifted its reference point.

And
so, Israel is fighting a losing battle on the PR front. The fact that
militarily Israel is powerful makes the liberals forget the justifications for
our military might - that our "right" came before our
"might", because they never really cared about the justifications.
They only supported us when we were the underdog. Israel is at pains to show
itself as the underdog currently, though it truly is, because the Iron Dome
limits Israeli casualties, and our military boasts of knowing where all Hamas
leaders are make us seem invincible. These things are beside the point. The
point should be: does Israel have the moral right to exist? If
affirmative, then Hamas is the aggressor completely, and the world must support
Israel's destruction of Hamas. If negative, then not. However, liberal world
opinion does not concern itself with that question in any real way, and instead
side-steps it, and asks, but why should Israel sow such destruction upon a
weaker enemy? This question, when asked without the moral judgment component of
“who is right?” leads the liberal world to support Hamas, the perceived
underdog.

But
how, one might ask, is Hamas winning the PR war? The answer lies in the
international news media, who have bought the new Palestinian David vs. Israeli
Goliath, hook, line and sinker. While there are plenty of images of wounded and
damage on the Israeli side, these are under-reported. On the other hand, the pathetic
images from Gaza are over-reported. Furthermore, the background is left out so
that the viewer of the media is left with a stilted picture of what happened.
The victims are used twice: once as human shields to protect the Hamas, who do their
warfare from heavily populated areas, and again as props in the PR war, when their
dead bodies are displayed to the world as evidence of Israeli heavy-handedness.

The
liberal media is so notoriously against Israel that it essentially ignores the
terror that Hamas commits against its own people for the sake of keeping the
"Israel as the aggressor" story fresh. For example, yesterday, Hamas
shot a number of people and dragged their bodies through the streets, as
punishment for "aiding Israel". Did the NY Times publish these
images? How about girls being killed for being raped (a capital offense in Gaza’s
society)? No. How about the very real problem that western girls who go to
"help the Gazans" or "Free Free Palestine" face, that of rape
by the hands of Gazans? The international solidarity movements hush these
complaints up, and tell the girls not to report these rapes, for they will
"damage the cause"? Essentially, the liberal media has chosen sides -
it has chosen Hamas, and they are willing to white-wash its sins for the
"greater good".

So,
while Israel valiantly tries to get its story out there, it will never be as
loud as the story the liberal media allow the Hamas to publish. Israel can
mitigate this by being clear, concise, and to the point. Israel can voice
insistently that there is evil and there is good, and Hamas is evil. They can
publish the above stories, and let the world know. But the sad fact is that as
long as Israel wins in war A, it will never win war B, since the liberal deck
is stacked against them.

(Israel may decide as well to recognize an incontrovertible fact: the enemies of Israel and the Hamas sympathizers will continue to blame, berate and demonize Israel for even the lowest level self-defense. In this case, with the PR battle so imbalanced, Israel may calculate that it might as well do its best to truly intimidate the enemy into submission in as extreme a way as necesary, since the negative PR is almost certain, anyway.)

And
so, Israel must choose: should we win the PR battle, or defend ourselves
militarily? It is probable that it cannot win both at the same time. And if so,
Israel's first responsibility is to its physical security. The response Israel
is displaying is not excessive, it is necessary to remove the attack
capabilities of an enemy that refuses to commit to the most basic rules of war.
And talk of a cease fire damages Israel tremendously in that it reduces the
perceived necessity of the military air-strikes.

Israel
can do much to improve its PR campaign, and I hope they do, but I recognize
that very few people in the world have not already taken a side in this
conflict, based not on justice, but on liberal emotion.

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